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Wednesday, 19 July 2017

Today I had some fun with some rather literal worldbuilding. Using the free visualisation Space Engine offers an immense variety and some very powerful procedural generation software. Seeing the rendering power of this engine I decided to experiment with Maya, taking some of its possibilities further, as although effective with natural phenomena, I wondered about using it as a springboard for some science fiction models.

After extracting the procedural generation of a particular planet into bump and diffuse maps, I took them into Maya and built a model out of three spheres - the base planet, a cloud layer, and a faux atmosphere with a transparency determined by its facing ratio to the camera.

Space Engine tended to crash when exporting a Mercator projection larger than 4096 x 2048 pixels, but offered a box projection option as an alternative where it would export a file into six smaller images. A box projection allowed for the construction of a more high-definition model and could be useful for close-up shots.

The world I used was rather dead, so using Mudbox I painted on bands of colour that would mimic foliage.

The night map - intended to show signs of civiliseation - was the most bespoke part of the project,.as Space Engine has no way of building this on its own. It had to be created from scratch and was used as an illumination map.

The techniques used to build the shaders and the textures could - with further practice - be built more from scratch, allowing for more custom-designed planets that can be built in the span of an afternoon.

Sunday, 2 July 2017

New Designers is but a few days away, but this blog has been quiet so to alleviate that I present a few stills that I have prepared.

Rendered in full HD quality, and what I have has been tested in a video sequence. Getting everything right and keeping everything clean well however has been nothing short of a monolithic task. This project started a long way, back, as far back as September and to see the outcome now feels exhilarating as the home stretch presents itself.

I also took some time to build a business card. Nothing too flashy, gets the job done rather nicely though.

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Mark Stamp

What drives me above all else is curiosity in what worlds and beings are possible with the virtual space.

Cities symbiotic with the jungles that surround them, biomechanical insects and exotic beasts from the wilds of unseen planets, I love the freedom digital creation gives and what comes of it. A landscape, a person, a machine, a symbol and more can all be characters. I embrace this in all work done and things created. The greatest moment is when months of hard work comes convincingly to life.